{Originally posted to the author’s website, The Lid}
The left is having a cow because President-Elect Trump chooses not to get the President’s Daily Briefings (PDB) every day. The truth is they their freak-out has nothing to do with the PDB, or even the fact that he beat their corrupt nominee to win the election. Donald Trump scares the hell out of liberals.
The liberals say that because the doesn’t get the PDB daily the PEOTUS was proving he will be unprepared for the presidency, some add the President-Elect’s Sunday comment to Chris Wallace demonstrated extreme hubris:
“I get it when I need it, I’m, like, a smart person…I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.”
But Trump wasn’t exhibiting the kind of hubris seen in Shakespearian tragedy. Having spent much of my adult life in major corporations such as Interpublic, Disney and Viacom, the President-Elect’s statement was recognizable immediately. Perhaps because many of Trump’s critics on this issue are either lifelong politicians or broadcasters, who have only set foot in major corporate offices for things like requesting campaign donations, or news interviews they didn’t recognize why Trump answering that way. After all, these are people who never had to deal with the extreme real-world pressure of delivering the EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes and amortization) promised to stockholders
The President-Elect’s answer was similar to what would come from the mouth of a quality CEO of any major corporation, “Come back when you have something new.” And I wouldn’t worry, because as this type of Manager the first time someone doesn’t come back when there’s something new, Trump will (using the technical b-school jargon) rip them a new one.
Even his “I’m, like, a smart person” was not an indication of hubris. He was assuring voters that he’s smart enough to recognize when things begin to change, and when more frequent meetings become necessary.
The MSM still hasn’t figured out the reason Trump doesn’t act like the typical politician is because he’s not supposed to act like a typical politician. America voted for a strong successful business manager to be their next president–and that is exactly what they got.
Successful managers only receive “regular” updates from their senior staff when there is something new for them to present. Even if daily meetings were limited to the managers of the most critical of departments, those meetings would prevent a CEO of a major corporation from providing a vision, and managing the vast expanse of the rest of their company. If that kind of management style is important for the CEO of a major corporation to be successful, imagine how necessary it is for the POTUS–an executive managing the massive federal bureaucracy, to manage that way.
Some say one of the reasons the Carter administration had so much difficulty (okay was so lousy) was his very hands-on management style. Conversely one reason President Reagan may have been so very successful was that like a CEO he didn’t need daily meetings, nor did he need to be involved in every little decision. Reagan absorbed new information, set the vision for his administration, and was very involved in only the most important decisions.
Bubba Clinton was also very hands on…but what he had “hands on” had very little to do with the country or his management style
As it turns out, the Reuters report of last Friday, that Trump only receives one intelligence briefing per week was “fake news.”
Per the RNC’s chief strategist and communications director Sean Spicer, “three times a week” he receives the official PDB briefing, but “every single day, he’s getting a briefing.” Those every-day briefings come from his national security adviser, United States Army Lt. Gen. Ret. Michael Flynn. Even though Spicer didn’t say it, one may be able to assume that Flynn’s briefings are more “bottom-lined” than the very detailed PDB and expandable of course, when necessary.
Funny thing is those same liberals didn’t have a D.C. Beltway freak out in September 2012 when it was reported that Obama missed many of his PDBs:
The Government Accountability Institute, a conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB)….During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent
Last week Obama said that U.S. intelligence agencies failed to warn him promptly about the rise of ISIS. But 2011 and 2012 President Obama was averaging about between 11-12 PDBs each month (38%). What he didn’t recognize (or want to recognize) is when the situation began to change. During the period when he was only attending 38% of the briefings, Obama was pulling our heroes out of Iraq and ISIS was beginning to gain strength and fill the vacuum.
Interestingly during much of that same period as he was attending only 38% of PDB (from April 2011-July 2012) President Obama wasn’t attending his daily economic briefings either. As one might expect while President Obama was playing hooky from his daily economic and PDB meetings, the liberal media and the progressives in Congress didn’t object. On the other hand, Trump is getting slammed and he isn’t even President yet. However, the real reason for the Trump-bashing is that he’s a major threat to traditional way of doing things, and I’m not talking about daily briefings.
The traditional way is for a president to take a position look like he’s standing strong but then at the last-minute find a way to appease his opposition and back off. But Donald Trump isn’t acting like that.” Even worse from the liberals’ point of view, Trump is already changing attitudes about the economy and he’s trying to talk to, and work with leaders of their traditional base.
At times, it’s amazing to watch cable news and see the march of people going into the Trump Tower elevator especially when it’s people who a month ago vehemently opposed Donald Trump and everything he represented, and it’s not only the politicians like Mitt Romney.
Bill Gates like most people in “Silicon Valley” is a huge supporter of Democratic Party causes and candidates. Gates went up that elevator yesterday. When he came down the elevator and spoke to the press Gates compared Trump’s desire for technological innovation to JFK’s push for the moon landing.
Jim Brown who was greatest running back in NFL history has dedicated post-NFL his life to advocating for and helping minority communities. Brown was a featured guest at Hillary Clinton rallies in Ohio (in the NFL he played for Cleveland) and he publicly endorsed Clinton as his choice in 2016. When Jim Brown came down that Trump Tower elevator after his meeting with the President-elect, he was effusive in his praise. Saying that Trump did his research and seemed to really understand the issues facing minority communities, the football legend added that the President-Elect sounded just like him.
You see that’s the real reason for the criticism of Trump missing the PDB. It’s also the real reason the liberals are trying to de-legitimize the nascent Trump presidency with things like the Russian hacking story. Sure, they wanted Hillary to win but it’s more than that. They don’t even really believe their campaign rhetoric that Trump isn’t qualified to be President. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. The liberals are freaking out because they are worried that Donald Trump will be very successful.
Look what he’s done so far. The predictions were that if Trump were elected the stock market would fall into a tailspin. Yet excited about the prospect of lower corporate taxes and reducing the oppressive regulations of recent administrations the stock market has soared, and that’s only from the “institutional investors,” the individual investor market hasn’t joined in on the fun (yet).
In a little over a month since the election, while working on picking a cabinet and his transition team, the PEOTUS has proved that he will be a jobs president. He picked up the phone saved 1,000 Carrier Jobs, convinced a Japanese banker to invest $50 Billion in the U.S. which will create 50,000 jobs, and the day before Mr. Trump’s technology summit, perhaps out of fear as well as the anticipation of a better environment for business, IBM announced it will spend a billion dollars over the next four years to generate 25,000 jobs.
Donald Trump doesn’t take office for another month and he’s beginning to establish a real optimism about the American economy, an optimism that’s been missing during the economic melancholy of the Obama years. Granted it’s only a beginning, and the economy is still in a quagmire, but Americans are beginning to believe Trump will make America great again.
Put together the good economic announcements with the fact that Trump is working hard to reunite the country after the divisiveness of Obama years, and that he’s trying to reach out to minority communities like no GOP POTUS in recent history–it’s no wonder many liberals are adding adult diapers to their wardrobe, while working tirelessly to de-legitimize a president who hasn’t yet taken office.